The Year I Became an Author; Guest Post by Cameo Renae + GIVEAWAY

The Year I Became an Author

Well, I thought I’d do a random post on what I learned this year, as far as being an author.

First… I actually became an author. Whoo-hoo! J  

On April 30, 2011, In My Dreams was released. It’s my first novel and is a YA Supernatural Romance / Thriller / Mystery. I decided to Self-Publish, because it seemed like the perfect thing to do at the time. With the finished manuscript in my hands, I just needed to know what to do next… I knew ZERO! I was so clueless about the whole process, but then… I found Amazon.com. They have their own publishing company, which is pretty awesome.

Hey, I was a total newbie, and didn’t know the first thing about publishing. Thank goodness they have a tutorial… a sort of “publishing for dummies”… that helped turn my papers- with-words-written-on-them into an actual novel.

Next, I had to design a cover, which took many nights of Google-ing… I found a couple of pictures that I liked and bought the rights to use them. My first cover was plain and simple. It was blue and had a wolf howling at the moon. I added the title and my name and CreateSpace packaged it and turned it into a real book. I remember holding it in my hands… It was a magical moment! But…I have since changed the cover, and like it A LOT better. 

 Lastly came the hardest part… PROMOTION! Something I - again, knew zilch about… I quickly learned… NO promotion… NO sales. My new novel was merely a speck, floating in an endless a sea of books. So again… GOOGLE became my best friend. I finally dove into social networking and started finding bloggers to read and review my new story, joined a few blog tours, Goodreads, BookBlogs, FB, Twitter, etc… I had no clue of what to expect and became totally apprehensive about how people would perceive, not only In My Dreams, but me as a writer. It was a VERY scary, nerve-wracking time… Butterflies did somersaults in my tummy, every time someone was reviewing it. And they still do… :P

Well… In My Dreams started getting some pretty awesome reviews. I was actually dumbfounded at how people connected with the characters and the story. Most said that they couldn’t put it down, while others cried. I mean… I cried while writing those parts (I know… pathetic), but never expected anyone else to cry. That, for me, was amazing. When your readers connect with your writing… you’ve done a great thing.

I’ve finished my next book, which will be debuting soon, and have a lot more lined up for the future. You haven’t heard the last of Cameo Renae!

So this year has been a GREAT YEAR for me!!! I also got my first check from Amazon which makes me an official paid author. Woooo-hooo! That is a total dream come true! If you haven’t read In My Dreams, I hope you’ll give it a shot. You just might like it… ;)

Thanks Christina for allowing me to visit your blog! J

And now Courtesy of Cameo Renae, Author, I can giveaway THREE ebooks of In My Dreams in your choice of the following formats

• pdf                                                    
• epub                              
• mobi

To enter please leave a comment on this post including your email address. The winners will be chosen using random.org on Dec 15th.

I appoligize but no annonymous comments are aloud due to a dramatic increase of spam comments over the last couple weeks. I am working to get all of that cleared up :) please bear with me.